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16 Digital Initiative in Higher Education You

Must Know
By UGCNETPAPER1 Team

25-32 minutes

MHRD, is responsible for the overall development of the basic

infrastructure of Higher Education sector, both in terms of
policy and planning. Under a planned development process, the
Department looks after expansion of access and qualitative
improvement in the Higher Education, through world class
Universities, Colleges and other Institutions through
various Digital Initiative in Higher Education.

To expand the Higher Education sector in all is modes of

delivery to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in Higher
Education to 15% by 2011-12 to 21% by 2016-17 and 30% by
the year 2020.

The aim to raise the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in the

higher education from 24.5 (2015-16) to 30 by 2020, and the
quest to enhance the quality of education would require a
large scale expansion of the high quality education
opportunities.

However, physical expansion of such facilities is fraught with

both infrastructural and human resource limitations.

Fortunately, in the days of fast expanding IT facilities, the

technology can be leveraged to address these twin concerns of
enhancing access and quality.

Heads up! You can also refer other ICT topics based on latest
UGC NET Exam syllabus
 ICT: General abbreviations and terminology.
Basics of Internet, Intranet, E-mail, Audio and Video-
conferencing.
Digital initiatives in higher education.
ICT and Governance.

With a view to improve the quality of education using the ICT

and to translate the power of IT into expanded learning
opportunities, the National Mission on Education through ICT
(NMEICT) was launched. Over the last 5 years, the NMEICT has
made significant gains by developing IT interventions that have
potential to change the higher education scenario.

Over a period of time, NMEICT has made significant gains by

developing IT interventions that have potential to change the
higher education scenario.

Below is the list of Digital Initiative in Higher Education

launched & dedicated to the Nation in the field of Higher
education

Top 16 Digital Initiative in Higher Education

#1 Study Webs of Active Learning for

Young Aspiring Minds(SWAYAM)
SWAYAM is an indigenous (Made in India) IT Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs) Platform for providing best quality
education that can be accessed by anyone, anytime and
anywhere using the IT system.

The Concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

involves online delivery of interactive learning content to large
number of people simultaneously. It allows sharing of best
quality education with everyone, thereby bringing in equity as
far as the quality of education is concerned.

learning made easy with SWAYAM

learning made easy with SWAYAM

SWAYAM platform is developed by Ministry of Human

Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council for
Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft .

Its ultimately capable of hosting 2000 courses and 80000

hours of learning: covering school, under-graduate, post-
graduate, engineering, law and other professional courses.

All the courses on this platform are interactive, prepared by the

best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to
the students in India.

More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from

across the Country have participated in preparing these
courses.

Not only this; In order to ensure best quality content are

produced and delivered, Nine National Coordinators have
been appointed: They are-

Courses under SWAYAM would be available in the following

levels: For each level, there is a National Coordinator, who
would be responsible for the quality of content:

Out of school Children: for classes 9th to 12th (National

Coordinator: National Open School Society)
School children in classes 9th to 12th (National
Coordinator: NCERT)
Undergraduate (non-engineering) courses (National
Coordinator: CEC)
Post graduate (non-engineering) courses (National
Coordinator: UGC)
Engineering Courses (National Coordinator: IIT Madras)
Management Courses (National Coordinator: IIM
Bangalore)
Out of college students (National Coordinator: IGNOU)
 Teaching the teachers (National Coordinator: NITTER
Chennai)

[Official Swayam website – https://swayam.gov.in/ ]

There are 4 quadrants in the MOOC pedagogy:

Video tutorials covering a whole course – normally having

about 20 hours of instruction in series of lectures, each
lecture not exceeding 30 minutes.
E-Content: reading material that could add to the learning
imparted through the video tutorials.
Self-Assessment: Quizzes/assignments that intersperse
the course
Discussion forum for posting queries

All the courses delivered through SWAYAM are available free of

cost to the learners, however students wanting certifications
shall be registered, shall be offered a certificate on successful
completion of the course, with a little fee.

At the end of each course, there will be an assessment of the

student through proctored examination and the marks/grades
secured in this exam could be transferred to the academic
record of the students. you can see the latest notification by
UGC around this.

University Grants Commission (UGC) has vide Gazette

Notification dated 19th July, 2016, notified Regulation, 2016
regarding ‘Credit Framework for Online Learning Courses through
SWAYAM’. Accordingly, a student studying at a recognized
institute anywhere in the country and having cleared the Online
Course through SWAYAM, shall be awarded Credits and the
credits earned by such a student shall be transferred from the
Host Institute to the Parent Institute where the student is
studying.

However, at present, the Credits up to 20% of the total

courses can only be earned in a Semester by such students
 through online learning delivered on SWAYAM platform
You can also download SWAYAM applications from
popular app stores to help to pursue your course while you
are on the move.

#2 SWAYAM Prabha: the 32 Educational

DTH Channels
The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted
to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7
basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new
content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more
times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their
convenience. The channels are uplinked from BISAG,
Gandhinagar.

The contents are provided by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU,

NCERT and NIOS. The INFLIBNET Centre maintains the web
portal.

Swayam Prabha- 32 DTH channels

Swayam Prabha- 32 DTH channels

The DTH Channels cover: –

Curriculum based course contents covering diverse

disciplines such as arts, science, commerce, performing
arts, social sciences and humanities subjects, engineering,
technology, law, medicine, agriculture etc. in higher
education domain (all courses would be certification-ready
in their detailed offering).
School education (9-12 levels) modules; for teacher
training as well as teaching and learning aids to children of
India to help them understand the subjects better and also
help them in better preparedness for competitive
examinations for admissions to professional degree
programmes.
 Curricula and courses that can meet the needs of life-long
learners or Indian citizens in India and abroad.
IIT-PAL – to assist the students in the Classes 11 and 12
aspiring to join IITs by encouraging scientific thinking and
conceptual understanding critical to answer the ‘tough’
questions of JEE Advanced, so that good quality students
enter the portals of IITs. The four channels under this
would be on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

The project was conceived and completed within 3 months with

the active participation of the Bhaskaracharya Satellite
Application Centre and Geo informatics (BISAG) Gandhinagar
and ECIL Hyderabad.

[Official website- http://www.swayamprabha.gov.in/ ]

Mobile app- https://play.google.com/store

/apps/details?id=com.bisag.introslider&hl=en_IN

#3 National Digital Library (NDL)

Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) under its
National Mission on Education through Information and
Communication Technology (NMEICT) has initiated the
National Digital Library of India (NDL India) pilot project to
develop a framework of virtual repository of learning resources
with a single-window search facility.

The Project titled “Development of National Digital Library of

India, Towards Building a National Asset” has been sanctioned
to IIT, Kharagpur under NMEICT by MHRD.

NDL is the Single Window Platform that collects and collates

metadata from premier learning institutions in India and
abroad, as well as other relevant sources. It is a digital
repository containing textbooks, articles, videos, audio books,
lectures, simulations, fiction and all other kinds of learning
media.
NDL India is designed to hold content of any language and
provides interface support for leading Indian languages. It is
being arranged to provide support for all academic levels
including researchers and life-long learners, all disciplines, all
popular form of access devices and differently-abled learners.

National Digital Library in India aims to collect, preserve and

disseminate entire intellectual output of our country and
provide online access from school level to post graduate level,
including technical education.

National Digital Library

The project aims to develop

overall framework to collate large number of e-contents for

school, college and higher education, e-content, virtual
library, covering needs of learners with differing abilities
Design & development of “OAI-PMH” Server for Metadata
Harvesting, Indexed etc.
Serve as a pan-India virtual teaching-learning-evaluation-
knowledge platform and for key national asset and
Collect resources from other Ministries such as Ministry of
Culture, Health, Rural Development & Department of
Science & Technology on this portal.
Filtered and federated searching is employed to facilitate
focused searching so that learners can find out the right
resource with least effort and in minimum time.

There are more than 72 lakh digital books available through the
NDL. The contents cover almost all major domains of
education and all major levels of learners from school level to
the highest level of education including life-long learners.

More than 15 lakh students have registered themselves in the

NDL. The NDL is available through a mobile app too.

#4 National Academic Depository

National Academic Depository (NAD) is an initiative of Ministry
of Human Resources Development, Govt. of India (MHRD) to
facilitate digital itssuance, storage, access and verification of
Academic Awards issued by Academic Institutions.

NAD is a Unique, Innovative and Progressive initiative under

“Digital India” theme towards achieving Digital enablement of
the Education Records. NAD aspires to make the vision of
Digital Academic Certificates for every Indian a reality.

NAD-ONLINE STORE HOUSE OF ALL ACADEMIC AWARDS

NAD-ONLINE STORE HOUSE OF ALL ACADEMIC AWARDS

This touches the lives of Indian youth and empowers them

with Digital, Online, Trusted, Verifiable Certificates which
are accessible in a secure manner at all times.
NAD promises to do away with difficulties / inefficiencies
of collecting, maintaining, and presenting physical paper
certificates.

#5 e-Shodh Sindhu
Based on the recommendation of an Expert Committee, the
MHRD has formed e-ShodhSindhu merging three consortia
initiatives, namely UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium,
NLIST and INDEST-AICTE Consortium.

More than 15,000 international electronic journals and e-books

are made available to all the higher educational institutions
through the e shodh Sindhu initiative. This allows access to be
best education resources in the world using digital mode.

The INFLIBNET, Gandhinagar, Gujarat is implementing the

Scheme.

Official website –https://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ess/about.php

#6 Virtual Labs
Physical distances and the lack of resources make us unable
to perform experiments, especially when they involve
sophisticated instruments. Also, good teachers are always a
scarce resource. Web-based and video-based courses address
the issue of teaching to some extent. Conducting joint
experiments by two participating institutions and also sharing
costly resources has always been a challenge.

With the present day internet and computer technologies the

above limitations can no more hamper students and
researchers in enhancing their skills and knowledge. Also, in a
country such as ours, costly instruments and equipment need
to be shared with fellow researchers to the extent possible.

VLAB-Under the National Mission on Education through ICT

VLAB-Under the National Mission on Education through ICT

Web enabled experiments can be designed for remote

operation and viewing so as to enthuse the curiosity and
innovation into students. This would help in learning basic and
advanced concepts through remote experimentation.

Today most equipment has computer interface for control and

data storage. It is possible to design good experiments around
some of these equipment, which would enhance the learning
of a student. Internet-based experimentation further permits
use of resources – knowledge, software, and data available on
the web, apart from encouraging skillful experiments being
simultaneously performed at points separated in space (and
possibly, time).

Virtual Lab does not require any additional infrastructural setup

for conducting experiments at user premises. One computer
terminal with broadband Internet connectivity is all that is
needed to perform the experiments remotely.

Over 205 virtual labs in 9 Engineering & Science disciplines,

comprising about 1515 experiments are operational and
currently being accessed by more than 6 lakh students.
Official website- http://www.vlab.co.in/

#7 e-Yantra
An MHRD initiative under NMEICT Programme, named “e-
Yantra” is implemented to incorporate Robotics into
engineering education with the objective of engaging students
through exciting hands-on application of mathematics,
computer science, and engineering principles. Creation of
robotic platforms has been very successfully demonstrated
during Phase-I of the project. Presently, e-Yantra has been
implemented in 100 colleges.

eYantra-Sponsored by MHRD under the National Mission on

Education through ICT
eYantra-Sponsored by MHRD under the National Mission on Education
through ICT

eYantra is creating skills by setting up lab infrastructure for

project based learning and training teachers in these 100
engineering colleges.

Going ahead, MHRD sees the core skills developed by IITB as

generating, distributing and analyzing content to further create
manpower with practical skills.All the projects and code are
available on the e-Yantra web-site www.eyantra.org as open
source content.

#8 Campus Connectivity
The National Mission on Education through Information and
Communication Technology (NMEICT) aims to leverage the
potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
in teaching and learning process. The Mission also aims to
provide 20 Broadband connections of 512 Kbps speed to over
25,000 colleges and 2000 polytechnics and optical fiber
connectivity one Gbps to 419 universities/ university level
institutions in the country which includes internet facility.
On the lines of ‘Digital India’ initiative of the PMO, the MHRD
has now decided that the campuses of Universities, (having 1
Gbps bandwidth) shall be made WiFi enabled campus. Already
all the IITs, IIMs, and NITs have established WiFi campuses.

The process of laying the optical fibre and provision of the WiFi
in Central Universities is currently underway.

#9 Talk to a Teacher
Talk to a Teacher developed by IIT Bombay, is an initiative of
the National Mission on Education through ICT, funded by
MHRD to provide free access to a few selected graduate and
postgraduate courses, taught at IIT Bombay by distinguished
faculty members and scholars at large.

It uses A-View collaboration tool developed by Amrita

University for providing virtual classrooms to the faculty across
the country. These courses can be viewed absolutely free of
charge at lower bandwidths on a personal computer/laptop
having a headphone and Internet connection.

Registration is not required as it does not have any

evaluation/certification process. The courses are recorded live
in the classrooms of IIT Bombay and may not reflect entire
content of the course.

Apart from the core courses in engineering and computer

science disciplines, the program also covers Humanities &
Social Sciences discipline. More than 80,000 teachers have
been trained, so far, under this project, involving synchronous
delivery of courses from IIT Mumbai & IIT Kharagpur.

 #10 Ask A Question

Ask A Question is a unique platform through which students
from science and engineering colleges all over India can ask
questions and faculty from IIT Bombay answers them.
Students can ask questions either through an online forum or
during an interactive live session. Interactive live sessions are
held on every Thursday from 4:00 P.M to 5:00 P.M in the field of
Electrical Engineering and every Friday from 4:00 P.M to 5:00
P.M in the field of Physics.

#11 e-Acharya
e-Acharya also called ‘Integrated e-Content Portal’ of NMEICT,
is the official repository of NMEICT e-content and all content
produced under NMEICT is being put at this Repository
platform at INFILIBNET Centre Gandhinagar, so to apply basic
tenets of preservation for digital content, implement standard
Metadata schema of different types for the digital content and
ensure their long-term availability.

e-Acharya-Integrated e-Content Portal

e-Acharya-Integrated e-Content Portal

All the Project Investigators awarded development of

e-Content under NMEICT have been requested to ensure the
deliverables are placed, at the earliest, in the Integrated
Portal/e-Acharya of MHRD. Further the NCERT shall provide
e-content Links to e-Acharya and the NOIS shall providing the
content on HDD to the e-Acharya repository and both shall
ensure that all the content including e-Books are made
available on e-Acharya.

The eAcharya besides a repository of content shall also have

the Metadata of all

these contents and it shall form a vertical of ‘National Digital

Library’ (NDL), being implemented by the IIT Kharagpur.

The e-Acharya shall be backed by a robust 24X7 Data Centre,

which shall be integrated with NMEICT, Cloud network, set up
at NIC / NKN Data Centre by the lIT-Delhi and called ‘Baadal’.
The MOOCs being produced under NMEICT shall also be
uploaded on e-Acharya.

 #12 E-Kalpa
Another MHRD/ NMEICT initiative named “e-Kalpa” creating
Digital-Learning Environment for Design in India has
successfully demonstrated the achievement of the following
project objectives, on completion of its phase-I:

1. Digital online content for learning Design with e-Learning

programs on Design
2. Digital Design Resource Database including the craft
sector
3. Social networking for Higher Learning with collaborative
Learning Space for Design
4. Design inputs for products of National Mission in
Education through ICT

As on December 2015, the content of e-Kalpa website named

“D’source” includes 160 Courses on Design Learning in
different domains, more than 400 Resources in the form of fine
examples of Design and crafts, 110 Case studies of Design
Projects undertaken by professionals and design students, 50
Video lectures and presentations by subjects experts and 600
examples of a visual Gallery that has documented works of the
rich tradition of art and design seen across different regions of
India.

#13 The Free and Open Source Software

for Education (FOSSEE)
FOSSEE project sanctioned to IIT Bombay has been promoting
use of open source software in educational institutions
(http://fossee.in). It does through instructional material, such
as spoken tutorials, documentation, such as textbook
companions, awareness programmes, such as conferences,
training workshops, and Internships. Textbook Companion
(TBC) is a collection of code for solved examples of standard
textbooks.

About 2,000 college students and teachers have participated in

this activity & close to 1,000 TBCs have been created in Scilab
and Python alone.

FOSSEE has made all the TBCs open source and has made
them available for free download. Scilab and Python TBCs are
also on the cloud, so that one needs only a browser to
access/execute the codes of TBC.

OSSEE is promoting the well-established open source

software: OpenFOAM, an alternative to the proprietary software
Fluent for computational fluid dynamics; DWSIM, an alternative
to the proprietary software Aspen Plus, for chemical process
simulation.

FOSSEE has also undertaken several new open source

software activities as well: raising Scilab toolboxes to that of
Matlab; development of eSim, an electronic design automation
software, an alternative to ORCAD; development of Sandhi, a
software for data acquisition and control, an alternative to
LabVIEW.

The FOSSEE team works on open source hardware projects,

such as Open PLC and Arduino as well. Through all of these
projects, a large number of students across the country have
been trained.

 #14 e-Vidwan
The ‘Information and Library Network’ (INFLIBNET) Centre took
the initiative called “Vidwan: Expert Database and National
Researcher’s Network” with the financial support from NMEICT.

VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists

VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists
The objectives of VIDWAN is to

collect academic and research profiles of scientists, faculty

and research scientists working in leading academic and
R&D organizations in India and abroad;
quickly and conveniently provide information about experts
to peers, prospective collaborators, funding agencies,
policy makers and research scholars in the country;
 establish communication directly with the experts who
possess the expertise needed by research scholars;
identify peer reviewers for review of articles and research
proposals; and
create information exchanges and networking
opportunities among scientist.

The database can be used for selection of panels of experts

for various committees and taskforces established by the
Ministries / Govt. establishments for monitoring and
evaluation purposes.

Further, the availability of single point expert database will help

the policy makers and funding agencies in decision-making
and policy intervention. As on 31st December 2015, the
database contains more than 17,500 profiles of experts from
2,000 leading academic institutions, universities, R&D
organizations including IITs, CSIR, DRDO, etc

#15 Spoken Tutorial

Spoken Tutorial is a multi-award winning educational content
portal. Here one can learn various Free and Open Source
Software all by oneself. Our self-paced, multi-lingual courses
ensure that anybody with a computer and a desire for learning,
can learn from any place, at any time and in a language of their
choice

The Spoken Tutorial project is the initiative of the ‘Talk to a

Teacher’ activity of the National Mission on Education through
Information and Communication Technology (ICT), launched
by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development,
Government of India.

Spoken Tutorial Forums is a friendly online discussion forum.

You can join existing discussions or start new topics, and get
lots of replies from the Spoken Tutorial community.
Registration to Forums is completely free and takes only one
minute.

Forums is very easy to use, even for computer newbies. It’s

very easy to format forum posts with fonts, colors, and many
other options. You can attach files to your posts directly from
your computer.

#16 Central cloud Infrastructure

Central cloud Infrastructure: The MHRD under NMEICT has
awarded a project to IIT Delhi, to set up a robust 24X7 backed
Data Centre and the activities have been put up at NIC / NKN
Data Centre, and the cloud is called ‘Baadal’. The IIT Delhi
cloud is hosting e-content and video content of e-Acharya.

NIRF

launched on 29th September 2015 by MHRD, this framework

intents to outlines a methodology for ranking the institutions
across our country. The Core Committee set up by MHRD
arrived at the broad level understanding and hence give overall
recommendations. Then only the methodology has been
driven.

The objective is to identify the broad level parameters for the

ranking of Indian universities and institutions. The parameters
that are broadly covered include- “Teaching, Learning and
Resources,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Research and
Professional Practices,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and the
“Perception”.
GIAN

Aimed to tap the talent of the strong academic network of the

country-scientists, entrepreneurs, at international level. To
encourage their overall engagement with Higher Education
Institutes in India so that country’s existing academic
resources can be augmented and accelerate the pace of the
quality reforms. Further to elevate India’s technological and
scientific capacity to gain the global excellence.

Through this, the best international academic experience can

be brought into our education systems. It will enable the
interaction of students and the faculty with that of the world
level best academic and industry experts and also learn
through their experiences motivate people to draw solutions to
the Indian problems.

UAY

The major objectives of the UAY scheme are to promote

innovation & development in IITs addressing the issues of the
manufacturing industries; to spur the innovative mindset; to
coordinate the action between the academia & industry and to
strengthen the labs & the research facilities.

IMPRINT

IMPRINT-Impacting Research Innovation & Technology

First of this kind Pan-IIT + IISc joint initiative supported by

MHRD to address the major challenges in science and
engineering. These challenges are must to fix and India must
champion in that to enable and empower the country for self-
reliance and inclusive growth. This novel type of initiative
containing two-fold mandate is intended at:

(a) Developing the new engineering educational policy

(b) Creating a fine road map to pursue the engineering

challenges

This scheme provides the overarching vision in higher

education that can guides research into the areas which are
socially relevant predominantly.

Technical Education Quality Improvement

Programme of Government of India (TEQIP)

launched by MHRD in December 2002. It was aimed to support

and upscale ongoing efforts in improving the quality of
technical education in India and enhancing the existing
capacities of the technical institutions to become more
dynamic, quality conscious, demand-driven, forward-looking,
effective and responsive. It can bring into the rapid economic
and technological developments occurring at both national as
well as international levels.

PMMMNMTT

PMMMNMTT- Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission

on Teachers & Teaching

Envisaged to address all issues related to teachers, teacher

preparation, teaching, and their professional development
comprehensively. The Mission caters current and urgent
issues- supply of the qualified teachers, fetching talent into the
teaching profession and raising the quality of teaching at
schools and colleges level. Also building a strong professional
cadre of a quality teacher with performance standards.

RUSA

Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan. It is the Centrally

Sponsored Scheme planned by the Central Government has to
implement -the strategic funding, reforms, and improvements
in the Higher Education sector at the state level.